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The roof over my head has a leak. Perhaps it is my ideas leaking in or just some small, annoying thing that causes people to look at something they usually dismiss. A roof can make or break a building. A sharp peak can draw attenention and create an oriental mood while smooth curves can create a more modern approach. Inside of a building, the social atmostphere is created simply by height. High ceilings create social areas while columns and pathways, such as in the cafeteria, create direction. Lower ceilings promote more closer knit areas more suitable for work than social activities. Natural light can also be utilized from areas such as these. Large open windows can be a focal point while sky lights work to create a more open area.
In my building I want to have a sloping roof, possibly with natural lighting. This form allows for a semi-split level building. The first floor will extend through the whole structure while the highest part will have a shorter second level complete with cafe. Natural lighting would allow for a constant source of energy that would limit electricity use but may also detract from the mood inside. I would love to use hanging lights to create a focal point on the ceiling, such as those in the new wing of the school. This would add to the mood of the giant "lava lamp" blobs inside my building.
*note: perspective drawings pending to be scanned into blog.
In all honestly, I am unsure of what to put in this blog. However, in that same sense, this leads me to believe that I have found some new insights simply by not knowing. I have never been a student that took to losing well; my entire life has been composed of settling for nothing less than par. But this project was never about winning or losing - it was about building something innovative that represented how we feel when the world around us turns to "savage inequality." Our group worked well to all input something, because we all knew how it felt to be that burning man, unequal and savagely attacked until there is nothing left by everyone around us. Being unsure exactly what to say in this blog shows that this is not an event that can simply be written about as much as experienced, internalized, and connected with.
For me, burning man showed me that the simple things I think matter the most like getting A's in classes or being the best will not matter years from now. The journey we take to get where we are today matter the most. In the end, the little fights and the littler successes are forgotten. In the end, we always find a way to succeed even if it is only a change in ourselves that make the journey worth the while. In the end, everything will go up in flames. In the end, we will rise from the ashes and remember the journey we made.
I, like most teenagers, struggled to find myself during high school. I began by defining who I am not; I am not someone who lived through a traumatic life experience; I am not defined by my Filipino-American background; I am not someone who never makes a mistake; I am not someone looking for benefits because I strive to be a woman studying to be an engineer; I am not someone who always sticks to my morals. Through all of my perils to discover who I am not, I found who I am. I am ambitions, defiant, and motivated; I expected to be treated as an equal; and I make mistakes affecting the root of my beliefs, but through it become even stronger in my morals and faith.
I believe everyone changes, and we all show it in our own way. In this case, we can show who we are and how we change with paint, pictures, movies, recipes, color, shape, words, signs, arrows, everything that defines us. We can interact, design, rethink, and change all in one place. In essence, we can be.
Goals for this week:
- Finish perspective drawings
- Find a perspective that I have not considered yet
- Finish everything on time
For the perspective drawings, I really want to focus on how people communicate with each other, less how I communicate with them. The entire building will be white-walled until the students cover the walls. There will be no distinct path or direction to the building, given students usually begin knowing little about where they will be in four years. The interactions with this building are essential; what students leave will be viewed for generations. Their writing, music, videos, food, and history provide the foundations for the memorial.
My bubble diagram really helped me to expand on how to I want to portray my building. For my final drawing, I want to inlude and inverted form of my building; one end will begin as a square then fall and spew on to the grown in rolling, misshapen blobs. My favorite drawing so far is the first I completed. I like the upper cafe. I also like the design of the drawing that is half undergraound but do not like the set up of the interior or how the gallery ends in a cafe. I really enjoyed doing the secions because I could add details usually not shown in a typical floor plan. I have not finished my sections yet but am flexible on the furnishings of the interior of my buiding.
- finish three bubble sketches and sections on the provided outlines of my building
- think deeply about what i want to be inside my building.. possibly meditate on the idea, write about it, and re-analyze everything until I am sure it is perfect (or imperfect since my building reflects high schoolers and no one is perfect. so perfectly imperfect)
- keep up to my date on blogs and be sure all of them reflect the true nature of high school students
If there is any one thing I know I have (repeatedly) done already it is to relate to my subjects, given I am one. Knowing this, I know that every teenage strives to express him or herself. Luckily for me, all of my rooms seem to be fitting together so far: the unyielding exterior and abstract interior of my building has metaphorically expressed itself sufficiently. To push my own boundaries I will be vomiting up the insides of my building in hope of finding something new among the guts and gore. Hopefully I will find something in the guts and gore to show on the outside of my building.
It is amazing what you can learn from a different perspective. Although my project did not reveal much to me, the ideas of other did. To be able to see through the eyes of Walt Disney or find Andy Warhol showed, in the words of Warhol himself, that there is art all around us. My building was always desgined to reflect perspective. It was meant to convey the perspective of high schoolers as they leave school into the world looking forward to the changes they will live through. It was a way to pass on what little we have seen to those who will enter high school after us so they may live to make a change as well.
